[neoterics]

In SEO, all PR is good PR, the amount of links they are getting from all this news coverage could easily make them rebound from this. They need to cease these practices, disavow links and they'll be back, even stronger. Reminds me of that sunglasses website that was ranking really well even after the negative press. Obviously in that case Google had to do something drastic to save face. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?_r=...

This is nothing but a media trial. If this didn't blow up on HN, it would have been largely ignored by Google and they would have just gotten away with a slap on the wrist.

Google likes to do this to send a message, but the funny thing is they do this to ACT like it doesn't matter who is breaking their guidelines, could be Fortune 500 or even Google itself, they will penalize you.

But the reality is that in each and every case, once the media moves on to the next shiny thing, the penalties were reversed:

http://searchengineland.com/interflora-gets-google-rankings-... http://searchengineland.com/90-days-later-google-lets-j-c-pe... http://searchengineland.com/google-chromes-paid-link-penalty...

Spamming and grey hat SEO practices are like speeding, everyone does it, but only a few get caught.